


day after tomorrow

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Episode: s02e09 Firewalker, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 22:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11068209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: She almost died a few weeks ago. But she is here, alive. And her partner has kissed her.





	day after tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> i have little to no knowledge of quarantines, so this is probably horrifically inaccurate.

Trepkos disappears into the volcano with Jesse O’Neil and Scully waits for the government to arrive in the dark, rubbing her raw wrist. It feels almost normal, after everything that's happened, and that feels worse than anything. 

“You okay?” She jolts at the sound before she realizes it's just Mulder; they should turn some goddamn lights on. She turns towards him in the shadowy room, still rubbing the sore spots. “Your wrist hurts,” he says quietly.

He's spoken quieter to her since she was returned, touched her more. She's not sure whether she likes it or is annoyed by it, but she'd felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder for long minutes after he'd left. Now he touches her wrist gently, turning it over to try and examine it in the nonexistent light. “I'm fine, Mulder,” she says determinedly. “It's just a little sore. All things considered, I'd say I'm pretty well off.” (They don't know that they aren't infected, she thinks. They could be dying right now.)

“C’mon, let's take a look at this,” he says stubbornly, in that soft, nudging way he’d had since the abduction. Somehow, they both move in opposite directions at the same time and she crashes fully into him. And then the next thing she knows, he is kissing her. His hands soft on her hips, his mouth hot on hers. She kisses him back with something like eagerness, anticipation, until he pulls away.

“We should… find you something,” he says unevenly. “For your wrist.”

“Mulder…” she starts.

“Scully, I'm sorry.” His hand is still cupping her wrist; he lets go and turns to head down the hall. “I'll be right back.”

His footsteps echo down the empty hall, eerie in the dark like they're in a haunted house. People have died here, she remembers. She almost died a few weeks ago. But she is here, alive. And her partner has kissed her. 

“You don't have to be sorry,” she says to the empty room. 

 

**week one**

Their temporary residence consists of a hospital-like room, with two beds on either side like a college dorm. She's asleep on her bed when he enters the room, wearing a robe over what looks like a paper gown. Her pale face has a scary resemblance to her time in the hospital, although her curled position gives her away - she was a lot stiffer in the hospital, looked almost dead. Now, he can see her breathing, pulse in her neck. 

He brushes some wet strands off of her face before making himself at home in the other bed. 

\---

“It's kind of morbid,” Scully says, propping socked feet up on the end of the bed. “Being in quarantine during the holiday season.”

“I bet we could get a radio,” says Mulder. “Play some Christmas carols.”

He's trying to make her laugh but she's quiet, chewing on her lower lip. “My mom's going to have a heart attack,” she murmurs. 

He instantly feels the crash of guilt, the dark, murky feeling he got whenever he talked to Mrs. Scully while Scully was missing. “Scully, I'm-” 

She holds up a hand to stop him. “Hush. It's not your fault. You never know what cases are going to be the ones that hurt you, and it was time for me to come back to work anyway. I just wish they'd let me call her, tell her I'm okay.”

Mulder nods like he understands, drums his fingers against the windowsill. Says, “I'll be right back,” before getting to his feet and heading down the hall to talk to the doctors. 

An hour later, Scully is calling her mother on a disinfected phone. Mulder stands awkwardly out in the hall, watching her mouth move without hearing any of the words, watching her twist her cross between her fingers. He goes and asks the doctors for a radio and they glare at him like he's a spoiled child but three days later, they have one.

“You're ridiculous, Mulder,” Scully announces when she sees it. “Although you're practically spoiling me, compared to recent quarantines.”

“Might as well be generous, you only live once,” he says, rolling the volume knob between his fingers. “Oh, hey, I like this one. I can serenade you if you want.”

She throws a pillow at his head.

 

**week two**

They play cards with a ragged deck Scully found in one of the drawers. Mulder can see her hands perfectly when she deals - her nails are ragged, chewed down to the quick. Her nails have never looked like that in the year he's known her. 

She has a nightmare on the tenth night, a sweaty, blanket-shoving nightmare that wakes Mulder up. “Scully?” he whispers, because it's easy to forget that she's back and even harder to remember that they're suddenly sharing space again. “Scully, are you okay?”

She mutters something frantically. Something like  _ get away get away. _

Mulder struggles to sit up on the rickety cot. “You're okay, Scully, you're dreaming,” he says, frantic. “You're okay, you're safe now.”  _ Or as safe as you can be in a month-long quarantine.  _

He doesn't want to touch her, doesn't want to startle her more, so he keeps talking, words running together. She finally jolts awake, shaking on the tiny bed. “Mul-” She swallows hard, effectively ending whatever she was going to say. “Bad dream,” she mutters, closing her eyes. “I'm okay.”

Mulder crouches on the ground beside her, feels her forehead. It's clammy under his palm. “Do you want some water?” he asks quietly. “Should I get the doctor?”

“Really, I'm fine,” she says, pushing aside blankets. “This isn't the most abnormal thing in the world; I've had nightmares since I got back,” she adds, and he winces, moving his hand from her forehead.

“Excuse me,” Scully adds, getting to her feet (socked feet still, because it was unreasonably cold) and padding into the adjoining bathroom. The door snicks shut behind her with a sense of stomach-turning finality. 

Mulder stays sitting on the floor. The weight of it all is coming back, night after night of unimaginable guilt. He hadn't been able to save her. If he'd been faster, he might’ve. If he hadn't brought Krycek, he could've made it (because who else could be responsible for the disappearance of the tram operator). If he hadn't lingered at the car for so long. If he’d convinced Duane to take him instead.

He'd had a dream the night before she was supposed to die. He was sitting on a dock and she floated just out of reach in a canoe. She hadn't said a word.  _ Don't die,  _ he'd said.  _ Not yet. Please, come back. _

She hadn't said anything but she smiled at him over the water, dipped a hand into the green-blue and sent ripples moving towards him. He'd woken up with her hand still stiff under his and wanted to cry, managed to hold it together until he got home.

Now the bathroom door opens and Scully comes out. Her eyes are puffy but she seems to have regained her composure. She crawls onto the cot, wrapping the blankets around herself, before acknowledging Mulder's spot on the floor. “You okay, Mulder?” she asks, brushing her fingers through his hair.

The ridiculousness of  _ her  _ comforting  _ him  _ comes over him, making him almost sick. “I'm so sorry,” he says, all at once. “For everything that's happened.” Because of him, she almost died; it's a miracle that she's sitting here talking to him. 

“It is not your fault,” she says evenly, voice hard. “You have to stop blaming yourself, Mulder.”

“You know that's not true.” Somehow her denying it makes him angrier. Maybe because she should be pushing him away instead of pulling him closer.

“No, it is true.” Her voice is hard. “I made my own choices on what to be involved in. You did not force me. You did not cause my abduction. Mom told me how hard you fought to save me… caused a scene at the FBI… I’ve heard the stories from Skinner, the Gunmen. It was never your fault in the first place, but you still had my back the whole time. You would’ve saved me if you could’ve.”

He takes a sharp breath and her hand slips off of the edge of the cot and into his. Her fingers curl tightly around his. “You have to stop blaming yourself for things, Mulder,” she adds, more softly, and he thinks she means more than the abduction. “You are not a martyr and you can’t save everyone.”

“I brought you here. I left you alone when I went to look for Trepkos; we'd be okay if I'd agreed to let you come.” He remembers the chiding in her voice when she told him they had to get past her abduction. He doesn't think he'll ever get past it; he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the desperate loss of her. “We wouldn't be stuck here if I'd…”

“You tried to get me to stay, and I decided to come.  _ On my own _ , Mulder. And I'm glad I did because who knows what would've happened to you if I hadn't?”

Some of the tension falls away at their banter. He scoffs jokingly, rolling his eyes. She grins at him in the darkness and he grins back. He’s missed this, them. “I'm not mad at you,” she says, her palm curling around his. He thinks she means for the kiss. He thinks she means for a lot of things. “I'm not.”

“I'm glad. I don't know what I'd do without you.” Neither of them say anything. He adds, “To debunk all my theories, of course.”

“Sure, Mulder,” she says wryly. Her hand slips out of his. “It's late, you should get some sleep.” She leans forward and kisses his cheek. 

He stumbles a little getting to his feet. He can feel the heat from her mouth, like it left a mark on his skin. “Don't let the bedbugs bite.”

 

**week three**

On the twentieth day, the heat goes off. 

“We're in the long stretch,” Mulder had said the day before. “Almost there, Scully. Just a few more days of total and complete boredom, and I'll have you home in time for Christmas.” They were virus-free so far, nothing popping out of their necks. It hadn't seemed like it could get any worse, and then. 

The doctors apologize profusely and assure them that they are working on fixing it - although they can't call anyone in to fix it because of the quarantine. “Well, you fooled me, I thought this was a four-star hotel,” says Mulder, and Scully smacks him on the arm. The doctors offer them extra blankets as consolidation. 

It doesn't seem so bad, at first. They stay in bed because there is nothing else to do. Scully piles most of the extra blankets on top of her and reads  _ A Comprehensive History Of North American Volcanoes _ for the third time. Mulder plays three hands of Solitaire before getting too cold and crawling under the blankets to count ceiling tiles. The day is fine, it seems, if not a little tedious and mind-numbing, but the night is a hundred times colder. 

“I give up,” Scully says somewhere around midnight. “Let's push the cots together, Mulder.”

He's half asleep, cocooned in the blankets, and he blinks blearily at her when she says it. “What?”

“Body heat, Mulder. And we could share the blankets. C’mon, let's shove the cots together.”

He's confused but isn't going to argue. They get up and shove the cots together, Scully arrange the blankets over the center so they can be underneath them both. They huddle together near the divide, under the mound of blankets. Scully reaches for his hand under the covers and he takes it. 

“Freezing out here,” she mutters. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

She scoots closer to him, and the gap between the cots widen. He grabs her to keep her from falling, shuffling backwards until he's against the wall and pulling her so she's not hanging in between the two beds. She grabs the edge of the blankets and pulls them up with her. “Thanks,” she murmurs, almost inaudibly.

“Course,” he says softly. His cheek is pressed awkwardly against her hair, their arms trapped between each other. She shifts, head on his shoulder. His arm curls around her back. “You any warmer now?”

She shifts upwards, leans forward to kiss him on the mouth. It's brief, but sweet, her hair dangling and brushing his cheeks. “Yeah,” she murmurs, shifting back to curl against him. “I'm warmer now.”

 

**week four**

The quarantine has turned into some kind of bizarre vacation. (Like the comedy movie vacations where the place is crappy and a bunch of shit goes wrong but it ends up being really fun.) They haven't worked on cases for a straight month, Scully has more or less been forced to relax and recover from her abduction and coma, and she's taken up residence in his bed for the past week. 

They haven't talked about it, mentioned the potential repercussions or Bureau procedure or how much he missed her during her abduction. They just… do. Effortlessly avoiding the subject, that's what they're good at. 

On the last morning of the quarantine, Mulder wakes up with Scully curled against his back, arm slung over his bare stomach. The sun is poking through the part in the curtain. He remembers all of a sudden that they get to leave today. They get to leave this cramped little building and go outside, home to their own beds (or couch, in his case) and fully functional heaters. “Scully,” he whispers. “Hey, Scully.”

“Mm, shut up, Mulder,” she mutters to the back of his head.

“Scully, wake up.”

“I am  _ sleeping. _ ”

He tugs her hand. “We get to go home today.”

Silence, then: “I'm up, I'm up.” Her tiny, freezing feet brush his legs as she climbs out of bed. 

“Virginia, here we come,” he says, making her smile as she crosses the room to dress.

A few hours later, they have been cleared, deemed healthy, and are on their way home. Mulder orders an in-flight movie, relieved to have something to  _ do  _ besides reading the same books over and over. Scully sleeps, head tipped back as she breathes easily. 

(They haven't talked about whether or not their relationship will continue past their quarantine, but she grabs his hand before the flight takes off and pulls it into her lap, doesn't let go for the entire flight. His fingertips are directly at her pulse point, he can feel the life inside her.)

The process of retrieving their luggage seems brief compared to the past month. An hour off the plane and they are standing in long-term parking. “Long term is an understatement,” Mulder cracks. 

Scully laughs quietly, head dipped down so her hair hides her face. Mulder waits for her to say something, clarify whether or not they'll be seeing each other before returning to the office after Christmas.

“I should head home,” she says, fingers tightening around her suitcase handles. “I'm going to see my mom and sister tomorrow, they've been worried. And no offense, but I need some time to myself… that's been rare over the past month, you know.”

“Of course,” he says, awkwardly. He understands, he really does, he's been itching for some space since the third week. He's just unsure of what to do now. 

She looks up at him, shadows falling across her face from the street lamps. Her eyes glow in the darkness. “My brother and his girlfriend won't be in for the holidays for a few days,” she says. “Would the day after tomorrow be a good time?”

He tries to hide his surprise: “For what?”

She shrugs. “Thought we could have dinner, maybe watch a movie. Enjoy our time off. I'm buying.”

A grin spreads slowly over Mulder's face. “Sounds good,” he says. “Your place or mine?”

“Yours. You have the bigger TV.” She rises up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “See you the day after tomorrow.” Then she turns, suitcase rolling behind her as she heads to her car. 

“Day after tomorrow,” he repeats, smiling a little as he fiddles with his luggage tag. She's here, and hopefully she won't be going anywhere. 


End file.
